Impartial Jurors Can Be Found, Court Experts Say : Trial: Extensive and painstaking screening of potential panel members is considered a key factor.

On the 11th floor of the criminal division of Los Angeles Superior Court, some would-be jurors played with puzzles, while others munched on fruit or sipped drinks.

But many found a better way to pass the time: Like people in two out of every three households in Los Angeles County, they were glued to the television set, transfixed by the parade of experts presenting grisly evidence of blood and slashed throats during the televised preliminary hearing for O.J. Simpson.

The unprecedented media coverage has led to an equally unprecedented audience for the proceedings surrounding the murder case, a fact that has sparked widespread concern. Now that Simpson, whose six-day, nationally televised preliminary hearing ended Friday, has been ordered to stand trial, a crucial question looms:

Can he obtain a fair and impartial jury?

The county’s top justice official, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, answers the question with a decided yes.

“I believe we can find a fair and objective jury if we are given the opportunity to question them,” Garcetti said Friday.

A trial, which has not yet been scheduled, could start as early as mid-September, with notices going out to potential jurors in coming weeks.

Jury experts generally agree it will be possible for Simpson to obtain a fair jury--in part because the Hall of Famer’s image was so good before the murders. But they stress that finding jurors with open minds will require extensive, painstaking screening.

Forget the presumption of innocence. Even without publicity, defendants face strong prejudices. Polls show that in many places, 50% of respondents believe a person is probably guilty just because he is brought to trial.

This attitude is reinforced by media coverage. A soon-to-be-published study by jury researchers suggests that television strongly influences viewers to accept a defendant’s guilt, often without the viewers even realizing it. Newspapers, though less prejudicial, also may create biases, researchers say.

Besides weeding out jurors with set convictions, the lawyers in the Simpson case will have to ferret out those who want to sit on the former athlete’s jury so they can cash in by selling their stories to tabloid media, a troubling phenomenon already seen in other well-publicized cases.

Yet for all the evidence against him, Simpson still enjoys an unusual advantage: Many people do not want to believe he did it.

Assuming there will be no plea bargain, some jury experts rule out a change of venue to counteract the effects of media coverage: The case has been dominating airwaves everywhere. They point out that Simpson probably would benefit most from a Los Angeles jury because he has been so beloved and admired here.

Jurors could not be expected to forget what they have heard about the case, experts said, but they must be able to decide his fate on the facts presented during the trials.

Studies have suggested that jurors are less able to shake emotional reactions stemming from media reports of gruesome details of the crimes, such as the victim’s suffering or sexual violation, than biases created by factual evidence, including reports of the defendant’s character that were not allowed at trial.

University of Delaware jury researcher Valerie Hans said she thinks the widespread broadcast of the 911 tapes, purportedly recording Nicole Brown Simpson summoning police as her husband raged in the background, could prejudice a jury in much the same way as a prior conviction.

In an experiment several years ago, Hans presented a circumstantial case to mock jurors. The case against Simpson at this point is also largely circumstantial. Those told by the researchers of the defendant’s record gave the evidence considerably more weight than those who did not know it, Hans said.

“It is not so much the amount of pretrial publicity,” said Ronald Beaton, director of jury consulting for Maryland-based Forensic Technologies International, “it is the level of detail. There has never been a preliminary hearing televised like this, so no one can say exactly what the impact will be.”

Although researchers say pretrial publicity tends to predispose people to assume the defendant is guilty, jurors are still able to overcome their preconceived ideas and acquit the defendant.

Several high-visibility cases, including the McMartin molestation and the William Kennedy Smith rape trials, have generated widespread publicity and ended in either the acquittal of defendants or in hung juries, noted USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

“I can’t think of an example where someone was convicted largely on the basis of pretrial publicity,” he said.

Given the pervasive media coverage, the lawyers in the Simpson case have simply tried to turn it to their advantage, observed jury consultant Jo-Ellan Dimitrius.

“It is a very subtle form of brainwashing,” the Pasadena-based consultant said.

The prosecution has been “using terms like bloody massacre, bloody trail . . . all very emotionally filled words that cannot help but have an impact,” she said.

“Also notice that Marcia Clark, every time she refers to O.J., refers to him as the defendant,” Dimitrius said. “She is consciously making efforts to dehumanize O.J.”

The defense is up to the same game, she added, associating Simpson with such “terms as major depression, suicidal, American hero and sports legend.” In trying to mold public opinion, Robert L. Shapiro, Simpson’s lead attorney, described him as distraught and suicidal at a nationally televised press conference when Simpson initially failed to turn himself in to police.

Though the coverage is generally assumed to have hurt Simpson--the preliminary hearing was largely a one-sided show in which the prosecution presented its evidence--it could backfire on the district attorney because the jury pool could become “desensitized” to the gore of the case, she said.

Dimitrius believes Clark was conscious of this when she turned the photograph of the bodies away from the public during the preliminary hearing.

“They want to save that gruesome, grisly photograph for that day in trial that is going to elicit tremendous negative response from the jurors,” she said.

Defense attorney Harland W. Braun, recalling his representation of a defendant in the “Twilight Zone” case in the mid-1980s, said: “I thought there would never be more publicity” in a case than that.

And when he defended a police officer accused of beating motorist Rodney G. King, he noticed a sea of satellite dishes outside the court and thought, “I will never see more publicity than in this case.”

But this week when he went Downtown to court, he saw the long rows of television trucks and satellite dishes outside the criminal courthouse where the Simpson hearing was taking place.

“This,” he said, “is twice the intensity.”

Beverly Hills lawyer Danny Davis, who represented McMartin Pre-School defendant Ray Buckey, said attorneys must learn to influence the media rather than pointlessly try to quiet them during headline-grabbing trials.

“You have to accept and integrate the role of the media as participants,” Davis said. “The news media is an active ingredient into the outcome of what we still pretend is just courtroom proceedings.”

When he was defending the accused child molester, Davis said, surveys showed that 99% of people living in the jury pool area believed he was guilty before the trial. ‘We had (potential) jurors talking about the death penalty,” he said.

After dragging out the preliminary hearing for 18 months, he said he consciously tried to court the media, becoming respectful of their deadlines and helping reporters whose stories would be good for the defense.

“I called it media litigation back then,” he said.

Buckey was eventually acquitted of most charges, and eight others were dismissed after a jury hung.

Unlike in England and Canada, where criminal charges have been dropped because of prejudicial publicity, there is no precedent for dismissing charges in the United States because of extensive pretrial coverage, according to defense lawyers.

Convictions have been overturned on appeal, however, because jurors used information in deliberations that they had not obtained during the trial.

But Simpson has a unique advantage: He was extremely popular before he was accused in the killings of his ex-wife and her friend. Recent surveys and calls to talk shows indicate that a significant number of people, particularly African Americans, continue to believe Simpson is innocent.

“That is something that is very unusual in the world of criminal defense,” said Hans of the University of Delaware, “to have a person who went into the situation with a great reservoir of public good will as opposed to a neutral person or someone who is perceived rather negatively.”

People do not want to believe that Simpson could have killed his former wife and her friend, said Alameda County Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth Burr, because “then any one of us could do it.”

The coverage of the evidence against Simpson may be balanced by his previous popularity, said Burr, who has tried several celebrated cases.

“It’s the type of thing that could be a wash.”

Although judges can prevent lawyers from interviewing prospective jurors, most attorneys believe the judge in the Simpson trial will allow extensive questionnaires because of the high visibility of the case.

Defense attorney Braun, accustomed to publicity because of the notorious cases he has tried, discounts the worries about pretrial publicity. He said he believes it influences judges more than jurors because judges are more political and attuned to public opinion.

“I think jurors are more affected by long-term prejudice than what they read in the short term,” Braun said.

He and others fear that the jury system is most endangered by tabloid media willing to pay for a juror’s story, which could entice people to lie to be on the Simpson jury. Two prosecution witnesses in the Simpson case have already admitted that the National Enquirer was paying them for their exclusive story.

A juror in such a situation might try to play a role during deliberations that would whet the tabloids appetite later on, several experts said. Beyond that, public confidence in the jury system might be diminished if jurors sold their stories after deliberations, they said.

Jury consultant Dimitrius said prospective jurors in the federal King and the Reginald O. Denny trials admitted they had considered the possibility of making money from serving on those juries.

One prospective juror said she thought about keeping a diary and later selling it as a book. Some tabloid television shows later approached jurors before deliberations were over, asking to buy their story, she said.

“From my perspective, that is an absolutely horrible thought--that there could be people with a hidden agenda who would come onto this jury so they can go on a show,” Dimitrius said.

Victor Delgado, 37, who reported to jury duty in the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building on Thursday, said he would love to sit on the Simpson jury just to watch the dueling lawyers--”the dream team”--even though it is unlikely he would be called again so soon.

Money would not be a consideration, the postal worker said outside the jury waiting room, but it would “definitely” cross his mind.

As long as the interviewer’s questions would not be objectionable, he added with a smile, “I would take the money.”

Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.